


The Lights of Rome Flickered and Died

by zellatron



Series: Ambulothanatophobia [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Character Development, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Racism, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Sexism, Slow Burn, Strained Relationships, Suicidal Thoughts, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 19:21:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21002873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zellatron/pseuds/zellatron
Summary: The only way to survive is together, but when two groups collide in Atlanta agreeing on how to do that doesn't come easy.Daniel Barr has led what remains of his group up from Florida, following rumours of a safe zone that prove false on their arrival in Atlanta; sickness and injury leaving them stranded in a city overrun by the dead.Rick Grimes, newly reunited with his family, has his resolute belief that they can survive shaken by the destruction of the CDC and the revelation of a world changing secret.Both men are desperate to keep their people safe, but with no sanctuary left to be found in the city and supplies running low their only choice is to pool resources and fight their way free of it's limits. The real problem lies in what comes next, as tensions rise, loyalties are tested, and morals are questioned the deeper into the Georgia countryside they run.For Tamsin Hughes, caught firmly between the two groups, things only get harder when she finds herself in the cross-hairs of the surly Daryl Dixon.





	The Lights of Rome Flickered and Died

Tamsin Hughes was running for her life.

But no matter how hard she pushed herself, no matter the side alleys and service streets she darted down in last minute diversions, she couldn't seem to put any distance between her and the pack of walkers following closely behind. They were relentless; unfazed by the convoluted path their quarry took as she tried to evade them. The way they managed to stay on her heels had her questioning whether they really were as dead as they appeared.

Her pace had been lagging for the last seven blocks, slowing from a panicked gallop to a stumbling jog as cramp flared in her sides and turned her legs to lead. She had lost count of the twists and turns she had taken and had no idea if she was still moving in the direction she had started out in. Her intention had been to circle around and head back to the gated property the others were hunkered down in, hoping to lose her tail before she reached it. That now looked as if it wouldn't happen, and because of it her game plan had to change.

She just wished she had the energy to think of a new one.

Wherever she was in Atlanta, it wasn't the neighbourhood she had started out in. The landscape had changed from leafy suburbia to the concrete labyrinth of the city proper. The street names meant nothing to her, and she didn't doubt that she had accidentally run deeper into the downtown area rather than out of it.

Abandoned Humvees blocked the junction up ahead, the machine guns crowning them pointed down the street in her direction. Tam slid to an abrupt halt ten yards short of the first gabions strategically set up to slow the walkers and funnel them into the kill zone of the guns. Between the temporary sandbag barriers and the blockade further on was a sea of decomposing bodies that piled higher and higher the closer to the military vehicles they had fallen. Her stomach heaved at the sight and smell of ripe, rotting meat; the only thing that stopped her vomiting was the fact that there was nothing in her stomach for her to throw up.

There was no way she was going to even attempt to wade through all of that. There were hundreds of bodies, thigh deep in places, and the gruesome scene was swarming with flies. Even if she had the strength to push her way through it all she doubted she would make it over the Humvees before the walkers caught up with her.

The creatures in question were closing in. The sounds of feet scuffing against asphalt grew louder, as did their guttural moans. Tam looked over her shoulder. Her pounding heart skipping a beat when she saw that not only had their numbers had grown, closer to fifty than a dozen now, but they had spilled out into a wide line and cut her off from doubling back the way she had come.

The weight of the hunting rifle slung over her shoulder should have been comforting but it wasn't. She didn't have nearly enough ammunition to make a dent in the mob and they would be on her before she got a chance to reload. Not for the first time that day she wished she had accepted Lonny's handgun when he offered her the use of it.

Cursing the dead below her breath, Tam searched wildly for an alternative escape route. After a few seconds, she found one. There was a narrow alleyway between a clothing boutique and an art supply store, the end was out of sight but she hoped that her chances would be better in the alley than they would be if she clambered through the bullet-mangled corpses. There was always a chance that one of the supposedly twice-dead walkers was still alive, and the jeans she was wearing weren't thick enough to stop a determined set of teeth.

It took everything she had in her to move again, her sore feet dragging as she jogged across the road and slipped down the alley. Her shoulders brushed against the rough walls, her grip on the strap of her rifle tightened. The last thing she needed was to lose or damage it; not when she was so far from the safety of the group.

They would be wondering where she was. Dan would probably be starting to panic. He hadn't wanted it to be her, and it was only because no one else was fit enough or willing to go that he had relented to her solo trip. The previous day's attempt at breaching the cordon surrounding Piedmont Atlanta Hospital had ended with Cole and Vince lost to the walkers, Dan's ankle sprained and the rest of the group too frightened to try again. Tam was the only one willing to make another attempt. It wasn't like they really had another choice. Burying their heads in the sand wouldn't keep Jaime and Henry alive.

She wasn't meant to have been gone for more than a couple of hours - the clinics and pharmacies she had ventured out to search were all within an hour walk of the house - but it had now been six hours since she had left, and it would no doubt be even longer before she found her way back. All she could do was hope the others wouldn't come looking for her or move on before she returned.

She had twenty-four hours to fix her mistake, if she didn't make it back in time then they were well within their rights to consider her dead and continue on their way. That was the rule they had all agreed to when they first teamed up. Whether Dan would let that happen she didn't know, but it was his job to do what was best for the group and the best thing for the group would be to pack up and go.

They couldn't keep aimlessly pinballing their way northward as they had been. They needed to find somewhere safe and permanent. First Tallahassee, then Albany and Atlanta - all rumoured to be safe zones at one time or another and all wild goose chases. Even after the others had proven to be about as safe as a tank full of hungry sharks, the Georgia state capital had always seemed a logical place for a surviving FEMA stronghold to be located. The constant stream of rumours and supposedly fresh information they came across as they made their way up to the city only bolstered Dan's adamant belief that they would find everything they were looking for there. They didn't. With hindsight, Tam felt she should have known. Maybe then she could have found a way to save Dan from his distress at finding Atlanta overrun by the dead. It was looking more and more likely that the whole country had fallen into the hands of the walkers, that the devastation hadn't been limited to Florida as they had hoped.

There was a chain-link gate at the end of the alley, separating it from a small parking lot at the rear of the buildings. It was a good seven feet high and padlocked shut with an extra security chain she had no chance of breaking without time and tools. Her only option was to climb over it. Another glance over her shoulder confirmed that she was trapped. The walkers were squeezing down the narrow path behind her one after the other, their blundering way of moving thankfully slowing them down.

It gave her a little more time but not much, maybe a full minute or two if she was lucky. She slipped the rifle strap over her head so the gun was lying across her back, wedged against her rucksack, and stepped up to the gate. The steel wires cut into her fingers as she gripped them, the muscles in her arms burned under the strain of hauling the rest of her - not to mention the bag full of looted goods she was carrying - up and over the gate. It was hard going. The rounded toes of her hiking boots were too wide to rest snugly in the diamond-shaped links and the gate bowed and trembled beneath her weight. She reached the top just as the first walker in the line reached the bottom, its filthy fingers missing the thick soles of her boots by a matter of millimetres.

The gate rattled violently as the walker ran bodily into it, followed by a second that did the same. She felt herself tilt towards the hands reaching up to her, the heavy bag on her back pulling her downwards. Eyes wide, stifling a shriek that swelled in the back of her throat, she held onto the top of the gate so tightly her knuckles turned white with the strain. Her heart rate had sped up even more, her blood was roaring in her ears, and she was panting heavily - light-headed and terrified. This wasn't how she wanted to die but that didn't stop visions of her death at the hands and teeth of the walkers below flashing before her eyes.

There was only one thing she could do. She jumped, leaping so that she would land as far away from the gate - and the walkers reaching through it - as possible. Her collision with the cracked asphalt was a bruising one; searing pain surged through her right leg and the rifle's barrel smacked her on the back of her head. For a terrifying moment she thought she had broken her ankle. Her first attempt at putting weight on it was agonising and the joint struggled to hold her.

She didn't have time to catch her breath and let the pulsing in her ankle lessen before trying to stand again. The hinges of the gate keened under the pressure of so many walkers pushing against it. The only thing that stopped them breaking through was the chain and padlock; she could only hope that they were as strong as they looked. Not that they had been designed to keep a mob at bay. It was only a matter of time before they buckled under the strain.

Bracing herself against a dumpster, she gritted her teeth and hauled herself upright. Her leg wobbled, the ankle protested, but she didn't sink back down to the hard ground like before. Her watering eyes prickled and she bit her lip hard enough to taste copper.

The little parking lot behind the shops was empty, the single-lane access road beyond it was silent and still. It seemed the only walkers she needed to worry about were the ones on the other side of the gate. Running would be impossible, and not just because of her weakened ankle. She had nothing left in her. Every cell in her body throbbed with exhaustion and she could barely get her feet to cooperate with each other and move in a straight line. She needed to find somewhere to hole up for a little while, just long enough to look at the map tucked in her bag and figure out how to get back to the house.

She limped out of the parking lot, pausing just long enough to decide which way to turn. Right seemed best. She could see doorways and more alleys set into and between the buildings flanking the road; a warren that offered her both the shelter and escape she needed.

The majority of the doors were locked when she tested them and her reluctance to make any noise prevented her from forcing her way into the buildings they belonged to. She finally found one that looked to be unlocked after trying four or five others.

It was a large, metal, sliding door stippled with rust. The rear entrance to a bicycle repair shop according to the sign screwed into the brick wall. The door resisted her efforts to open it, squealing and grinding against its tracks as it lurched open bit by bit. Tam gave up after several feet, it wasn't really necessary for it to open any more than that, and squinted into the darkness of the workshop; just about able to make out the silhouettes of the workbenches and bicycles inside.

She was halfway through the door when a hand grabbed her wrist. Cold and oily, its grip as tight as a vice. Tam recoiled, crying out in alarm, tripping backwards over the raised lip of the threshold and wrenching herself free from the walker's grasp just as the rest of it appeared from the gloom.

It had been a tall, lanky man once. Now it was a disfigured husk. Gore-soaked, bloated with decay; face and throat shredded by the feasting habits of its brethren, the gaping holes oozing blackened blood. It's cloudy, bloodshot eyes pinned her with an empty, hungry stare. She watched as it advanced on her, its lips had been torn off and its teeth were snapping in anticipation of the meal to come.

Wrestling the rifle free from where it was looped around her neck, still wary of firing it in such a reverberant space, Tam spun it around so that she was holding it by the barrel - turning it into a club. She swung it at the walker's head. The first hit unbalanced it, the second sent it to its knees. The third strike cracked its soft skull, which bowed beneath the strike like a pinata. The walker snarled and lunged clumsily towards her. She dodged its laboured attempt to grapple her by the knees and rammed the beechwood butt of the rifle against its head one final time. The wet sound of the skull giving way and piercing the brain was accompanied by the walker collapsing in a motionless slump on the ground.

Her hands were shaking. There were spots of blackened blood on her fingers, speckling the outside of her right forearm. There was cast off on her face, too. It clung to her chin and cheeks, mixing with the sweaty film that had formed in the blistering heat of the day.

The butt of the rifle was slick with the walker's blood. It stained the light wood a darker shade. _ Dark like the mahogany dining table in Granny Jean's old house_.

She had never killed a walker that way before. She had always done it with the rifle from a distance, ten feet away - if not further. Dan had made her promise to be careful, to not get too close and let him deal with the ones that she wasn't safe to shoot. She had always complied because he needed her to, even if she was worried that a time would come when she wouldn't be able to rely on her inherited gun or Dan's presence and strength; leaving her with no other way of defending herself. That, it seemed, wasn't something she needed to worry about after all. There had been no hesitation on her part.

A relief, certainly. But also a terrifying one.

Movement on the edge of her peripheral vision caught her attention. Her head snapped in its direction and her heart dropped like a stone at the sight that greeted her. More walkers. Silent, patient wraiths shambling towards her, floating down from the other end of the access road - the direction she had decided against going in. There was only eight of them but that was still eight more than she would have liked to be faced with so soon after the last.

She wouldn't be able to take them all on without using the rifle as it was meant to be used, but all that would achieve would be to bring even more of them down on her position. No, fighting them off wasn't an option. The only thing she could do was run.

She was really starting to hate running. To think that once upon a time, not even all that long ago, she had considered it a hobby. Not anymore, that was for certain. She'd happily never move faster than a crawl ever again.

Her ankle liked it even less but she broke into a slow lope anyway. The brief spurt of adrenaline killing the walker had released into her bloodstream faded as quickly as it had come, and moving at any great speed was a case of mind over matter. She headed for the end of the access road rather than down one of the alleys. Now that she knew there were walkers lurking around there it didn't seem as clever to keep to them. At least a wide and open public road would give her some breathing space if not a wall to put her back against.

Tam heard something but she wasn't sure what it was or where it was coming from. With caution she jogged out of the side street, stepping off the curb into the road and hobbling up the double yellow lines that divided it in half. The roaring, screeching noise started off as a distant echo but was quickly getting closer. There was a four-way intersection in front of her, empty unlike the last.

Foolishly, she stopped; keeping an eye on the walkers trailing her but focused more so on deciphering the noise and its source.

It was a car, she was sure of it. That or a motorcycle. It couldn't really be anything else. She started jogging again, towards the junction, hoping to catch a glimpse of the source so she could at least confirm that she wasn't hearing things that weren't there. Like the helicopter she had thought she'd seen on the horizon the day before, but Dan and Lonny had believed was a figment of her imagination.

But the car was real. It exploded around the corner of the intersection, fishtailing madly as it swung across the road. Tyres squealing, kicking up smoke. The air filled with the smell of burning rubber as sunlight glinted off the silvery hood. Two heavy-set men in the front, more bodies in the back. It was with a burgeoning sense of horror that she realised that the car would hit her if she didn't move.

She tried but she couldn't. She was paralysed, rooted to the spot and unable to do anything but watch, numb, as the oncoming vehicle careened towards her. She saw the driver's face fall with shock when he realised she wasn't a walker. The car's brakes screamed as he slammed his foot down on the pedal, but it was too late. He couldn't swerve and he couldn't stop in time.

The grille connected with her leg just above the knee, throwing her onto the hood. Downtown Atlanta swirled and rushed around her as the momentum of the hit kept her tumbling up the long bonnet. One final, dry thought crossed her mind in the nanosecond before she impacted with the windshield.

Of all the ways she could have died that day, this had to be the most ironic.


End file.
